Shifting from a White-dominant ministry model to a Multi-ethnic one – Transcript
Jim Latimer
Welcome to Coaching for Interims. We are about empowerment for interim ministers, best practices and quick help from interims for interims – wisdom from the field. I am your host Reverend Jim Latimer. And we have with us today, Reverend Dr. Todd Yonkman. Todd is a Transitional Interim Minister here in Connecticut, and has a lot of rich ministry experience as both a settled minister and as a transitional interim minister. In particular for this conversation, he has the experience of leading a congregation from a white-dominant ministry model to a multi-ethnic ministry model, which is tricky. And yet, a lot of churches are struggling with that. So, Todd, I would love for you to share some of your thoughts around that experience.
Todd Yonkman
Sure. Thanks, Jim. I really welcome the experience to chat with you about this, and so glad to be able to share a little bit of my story. Just briefly, my racial autobiography, so to speak, is that I was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is the second biggest city in Michigan. It has a real diversity of people groups in the city itself, but it’s also very segregated. So, I really didn’t have any significant experience of interacting with people of other races, really, until graduate school unfortunately. Even at the college that I went to, Calvin College, was a very white dominant sort of space. But, I want to back up just a second, because I was a part of a choir in college, called Campus Choir. And the director was Dr. Anton Armstrong, who was just starting out then, but has gone on to have a career as one of the foremost choral directors in the world. And he’s a person of color from the Caribbean in this very white college setting.
And he taught us gospel music. And teaching me and the choir gospel music really created a model for connecting across cultures in truly transformative ways that set the template for the rest of my ministry. That truly was a life changing experience. Jumping ahead, it really wasn’t until my wife and I were called to be senior co-ministers of Beneficent Congregational Church in Providence, Rhode Island, that I really felt like I was welcomed into the racial justice movement. And, to be honest, the way that I came to it was we had this historic downtown church that was on the verge of closing its doors.
And that’s because the church demographic didn’t match the demographic of surrounding neighborhoods. There was a cultural mismatch between the congregation and the downtown city neighborhood that it was in which was much more racially diverse, and much more integrated than church was. The church did have a significant number of people of color in it. But it was, what I learned, was a white dominant model. It was a white church with people of color in it, rather than a truly multiracial multicultural model. The worship style was centered around European, classical music. The leadership and staffing were almost all white. The pastors that had served the church were white men.
One person who was really key in helping bring about the shift and model was Paulette Littlejohn. She is an Elder in the northern Narragansett Indian tribe, which was a very big group of people – very organized and a significant organization in the state of Rhode Island. But her role in the church – even though she had been a member and had gotten married in the church as a young adult, and had been a member of the church for 50 years – had never served in any leadership role in the church. Instead, she and her family would host church suppers. Social suppers were really a part of the Narragansett culture. And it was something that they would do as a tribe, when they would have meetings to make decisions and those sorts of things.
And so, she offered that to the church. So, her primary sphere was in the kitchen. And the story that she told me that really kind of shifted the way that she viewed the church, was that at one of these social suppers, my wife, Nicole, who was serving as co-pastor at the time, went into the kitchen, and asked Paulette if she could help. And that blew her mind. She said, no one at the church – and these were her fellow church members whom she’d known for 50 years – no one had ever come into the kitchen and said, Can I help? So that was the first move. And then over time, I spent a lot of time visiting with her and ministering with the family. And at one point, she said to me, Todd, the big change for me and my family, Was that the message shifted from, You’re welcome if you come, to, We want you here.
Jim Latimer
Oh, wow: the shift from, You’re welcome if you come, to, We want you here.
Todd Yonkman
We want you here. Yeah. And so, for me, that’s why I had a book that I go into depth about this shift from white-dominant culture to a multiracial, multicultural model for ministry. That’s why in that book, for me, in this particular context, redevelopment work that is reaching new people, helping the church grow in membership and vitality, was inextricable from justice work – from racial justice work. Those two went hand in hand. Part of shifting the power dynamics in the congregation was that as we built authentic relationships with people of color in our own congregation, and with people of color in the neighborhood, more people of color started joining the church. And through a ministry partnership we partnered with the Community Gospel chorus, RPM voices of Rhode Island. Their director became our gospel choir director. Our choir members joined the RPM group. The RPM group joined our church. And they were just there.
So, that also shifted the power dynamics. Now, did racism and conflict around that arise? Absolutely. And so, we did the UCC curriculum, Sacred Conversations on Race. We had some very skilled leaders who could help facilitate that conversation. But that’s kind of the story of the shift in a general outline. There are multiple layers of functioning at the same time. I just wanted to point that out – that racial justice work and church vitality work, are in my approach, connected. They go together.
Jim Latimer
Racial justice work and church vitality work go together. Wow. Make a note of that. So, that’s great, Todd. Gosh, so many things are rich, but let me just say a few words as we wrap up this segment. I appreciated what you said around large churches with a demographic makeup that has become different from their immediate neighborhood. There are tons of churches like that. And they get stuck. Often, they just leave and go to the suburbs where there are more people like them so they can stay in their homogenous world, maybe. But with Paulette, that was beautiful. Because Paulette was a woman of color that had been there all along. The phrase you had used earlier when we spoke earlier was authentic relationship, authentic engagement, right? It can be about connecting with people who already share your values, but don’t know you exist. So, people in your immediate neighborhood, that don’t share your values – God bless them – but that’s not fertile ground, necessarily, for growing your own church membership, perhaps. But empowering marginalized people already in your congregation as I heard happened with Paulette…
Todd Yonkman
Yeah. I just wanted to add to that point – one small point. This is something that I hear in working with churches, because we also live in racially segregated communities, particularly here in southern New England. And what I’ll hear sometimes when I’m chatting with church groups, they’ll say, We live in a 97% white town. How are we supposed to engage this conversation? It really annoys me because churches will say, We have no diversity. My response is 97% isn’t 100%! And my current ministry setting in Granby, Connecticut, which is a 97%, white town, kind of proves that fact. I never would have dreamed this in a million years, but after George Floyd’s murder last year, someone from the town called me up said, We need to do something. I hear you’ve done some work around this. Will you be a part of it?
And long story short: we have created this organization called Granby Racial Reconciliation. It is a multiracial group. It is a racially balanced group. We have a number of people of color who are part of it along with white co-conspirators, we call ourselves. We are building a racial justice movement. We are addressing affordable housing and education. We’ve done a town-wide MLK Day celebration along with movie screenings, along with candidate forums, along with a whole bunch of town things. And we’re getting grant money to do it.
And that is in a town that is 97% white! It is not 100%! Whatever town you are in, there are people of color there that you can build authentic relationships with. And you can do this work! Saying that we don’t have any diversity, on the flip side, is denying the diversity that is already there. And that is a racial problem. We need to see and embrace the diversity that is there. So that’s my little sermon for that.
Jim Latimer
Well, thank you, preacher, and the Grandview Racial Reconciliation project! In the interest of time, I won’t say too much more now, but I love that you insisted on adding that. And I’ll echo what you told me earlier around, How do you know that a relationship that you’re building is authentic? And what you told me, which was gold was, You know it’s authentic when you’re inviting their stories and experiences to change you also. When both (all) parties are open to being changed by whatever is happening, this relationship, then it’s authentic. That’s one trait of authenticity that I wanted to hold up. Thank you, Todd. This is fabulous. We could go on quite a while on this. It’s good work. Good work. Thank you.
Todd Yonkman
Thank you.
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